Month: January 2006

Cemeteries on Private Land in Tennessee

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Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter has word that there is a bill being sponsored in the Tennessee state legislature that would “require property owners to grant access to graveyards on their property to visitors. The visitors are defined as “family members, descendants and close friends of the deceased persons buried there.” Visits would be legal for the purposes of visits the graves, cemetery maintenance, genealogical research, and for possible future burials.”

Stephen Fry discovers that he is just another ruddy peasant

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Ian Bell has an article in The Herald (UK) covering the hit BBC series ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ and discusses some of the things that Stephen Fry, the English comedian, learned about his family through the course of the show. ‘Who Do You Think You Are?‘ focuses on genealogy and helps people with their family history.

CDR Longevity – Manufacturers’ Reaction

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There has been a lot of discussion all over the place about the life span of your typical CDR. It’s important to genealogists, because we store our data on them, we use them to distribute data to others, we use them as backups, etc. etc.

So just how long do they last? A few weeks ago PC World carried a story of an expert that made the case for a short life span for burned CDs. Now they are carrying a response from some manufacturers, namely TDK and Memorex. TDK says that if properly cared for, it’s products will last upto 70 years. A General Manager for TDK did stress that a controlled room temperature was important.

Keep in mind we are talking CDRs – most people, including those interviewed in the above article recommend against CDRWs.

Memorex is preparing a new product lineup, to be launched in April, called the Pro Gold Archival Media series (CD-Rs and DVD-Rs), that has some pretty beefy claims, including upto 300 years for CDS. No word on prices, but I’m sure many genealogists will be interested to see that lineup once it hits store shelves. We, of all people, realize how important data retention is.

Cemetery Photography Books – Clarke County, Virginia

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This is an older story from August of last year, that I came across recently. The Clarke-Times Courier (Virginia) had an article about a retired couple who photographically documented every cemetery in a county and assembled it into a book. That is something I’d love to do in my retirement years. Never the same thing twice, outside, and your helping out a lot of people.